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December 05, 2005

The duke of spam

Most Spam Kings readers have heard of Walter Rines, the former partner of notorious spam king Sanford Wallace. Both men are currently fighting litigation from the FTC over their alleged use of spyware.

But few people who follow the spam trade know that Walt has a younger brother who's been in the bulk email business since the 1990s. In fact, Jason Rines, 35, was VP of sales and marketing for GTMI, the "opt in" email advertising firm that Walt Rines and Sanford Wallace founded in 1998.

When GTMI quickly folded, Jason went on to found his own online marketing businesses, and he now runs a company called MediaHeights LLC, also known as EmailResults.net, out of an office (pictured) on Washington Street in Dover, NH.

Over the years, Jason's managed to build the business while keeping a pretty low profile. But EmailResults was nearly thrust into the limelight in 2003, when it was hired by the Howard Dean presidential campaign to do some email marketing. The botched effort almost cost Dean his reputation as an Internet savvy candidate. But hardly anyone paid much attention to who was running EmailResults.net.

Now, Jason may find himself at the center of attention again. He's apparently been hired as an expert witness by Kennedy-Western University, an unaccredited online university that some have labelled a "diploma mill." KWU is facing a lawsuit from Joe Wagner, operator of Hypertouch, a small Internet service that has filed scads of lawsuits against alleged spammers.

KWU apparently hopes to have Rines testify that the university adheres to federal spam laws and has a policy of sending email ads only to people who have requested to receive them. In its court disclosures, KWU says Rines founded the first opt-in email marketing company and is an advisor to the Direct Marketing Association.

But should the case go to trial (unlikely, given that a settlement conference is scheduled for Thursday), Jason may not be in the best position to opine about the legitimacy of KWU's alleged spamming.

MediaHeights.com evidently managed to land some blue-chip clients over the years, including HP, McAfee, Sprint, and British Air. But things didn't always go real well. In 2002, Rines' email ad campaigns on behalf of clients promoting everything from mortgages and whiskey to college degrees landed EmailResults.net on the Spamhaus Block List for nearly two years.

During the Dean spam disaster, Jason made some interesting online comments (scroll down) about opt-in email marketing, and even publicly bashed his brother Walt and former boss Sanford Wallace as "conceited."

But as is often the case with "opt in" bulk emailers, the quality of Rines' mailing lists seemed to be questionable, judging from online complaints.

Posted by brian at December 5, 2005 02:44 PM

Comments

Posted by: Joe Wagner at December 17, 2005 03:17 AM